Suzanne Farrell's Notes from the Ballet

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Diamonds

Next month, The Suzanne Farrell Ballet will open the Kennedy Center's 2011/2012 Ballet Season with a celebration of my company's 10th anniversary. To christen the season, we will present my company's premiere performances of Diamonds. Both of our mixed repertory programs will end with this shimmering ballet that Balanchine first made on me in 1967. We'll be presenting it in partnership with The Sarasota Ballet.

Featuring 34 dancers in all—16 male/female pairings and a central couple—Diamonds is the final sequence in Balanchine's three-part Jewels, which is considered to be the world's first full-evening "plotless" ballet. Comprised of Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds, Jewels is Balanchine's balletic visualization of various gems. For each part, he selected music from a different composer. (Emeralds is performed to Fauré, Rubies to Stravinsky, and Diamonds to Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3.) Jewels was an instant success when it premiered.

Balanchine made it clear that his idea for a ballet about gems came from years before, when his friend Nathan Milstein, the renowned violinist, introduced him to Claude Arpels, of the famed jewelry house Van Cleef & Arpels. Balanchine once stated, "I have always liked jewels. After all, I am an Oriental, from Georgia in the Caucasus." I've always enjoyed that quote, connecting Jewels to his heritage in that way.

I think it's also possible that Balanchine was inspired by his original staging of Symphony in C, which he choreographed for Paris Opera Ballet in 1947 under the title of Le Palais de Cristal. Each movement was performed in different colors, but when Balanchine re-staged it the following year for New York City Ballet, he re-costumed it all in white. Perhaps he put those initial color combinations on reserve until Jewels came into focus 20 years later.

In devising the ballet, Balanchine asked which kind of gem I wanted to portray; I responded it might be nice to be a ruby, if only because most of my costumes up to that point had been white or black, and it would have been fun to perform in a different color. But Balanchine already had his mind made up, and so I was cast in Diamonds, with Jacques d'Amboise as my partner. And of course, it was meant to be.

Unlike most other Balanchine ballets, Jewels is a highly costumed production—a fact that surprised some people, given he had spent so many years educating audiences to appreciate the movement for its own sake, with minimal accoutrement. Karinska designed all the costumes, using a common visual element across all of the ballerinas' bodices. She didn't use real gemstones in the costumes—they would have been too heavy to dance in—but with the ornate perfection of her designs, from the audience's perspective, you never would have known the difference.

Karinska was very proud of what she had created, once saying, "I sew for girls and boys who make my costumes dance. Their bodies deserve my clothes." My own costume, a tutu, looked and felt very couture; she had designed something so magical and special. In fact, Diamonds was the first and only tutu ballet Balanchine made on me—and my costume also featured a lavish, bejeweled headpiece, a design never seen before—so the whole ensemble from head to toe brought out a very different quality in the way I moved. (In a publicity photo shoot for the ballet, I remember turning the headpiece around, so that the jewels cascading down my forehead were visible in all their splendor. I've since heard that someone once actually danced the ballet that way. How utterly impractical, but how funny!)

Diamonds begins with a lovely waltz for 14 ladies, followed by a gorgeous pas de deux to the beckoning voice of a French horn—a harbinger of what's to come with the rest of the ballet. I always loved making this entrance, because it's so beautiful and haunting—it's filled with so much promise, yet you don't know how it's going to be fulfilled.

As with many other Balanchine ballets—Meditation and Chaconne among them—I enter into Diamonds from backstage right, and traverse diagonally across the stage to meet my partner entering from the opposite wing. I sometimes tell my dancers it's as if I've lived on that diagonal all my life! When I once asked Balanchine why he was so fond of starting me there, his reply was simple: "So that you're on stage longer." And it's true: a diagonal is the longest straight path you can move within any square or rectangular space.

This diagonal was actually staged last, after the rest of the pas de deux was choreographed. Rather than use valuable time in the studio to determine how the dancers should enter, Balanchine started working with us from what I call the ballet's "pas de deux proper," where Jacques is kneeling in front of me. In fact, Balanchine didn't tell us this was not the beginning until he began choreographing the diagonal.

Throughout the ballet, various patterns in the choreography suggest the shape of a diamond. And the polonaise is incredibly thrilling—it's not as folk-like as the one in Theme and Variations, but rather a crystalline vision of what a polonaise would look like refracted through a diamond prism. In the finale, as the music crescendos, Balanchine juxtaposes the ensemble couples in a flurry of activity with the central couple in a slow arabesque promenade. This dramatic contrast creates a truly enchanting moment.

In a February 1975 New Yorker article, Arlene Croce once wrote that my dancing in Diamonds was an evocation of "the freest woman alive." Earlier this year, my company starting working on Diamonds at Jacob's Pillow, and indeed, it was pure bliss to get those steps into my body again and teach them to my dancers. I can't wait to share the culmination of our efforts with you.

Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée

I don't believe this ballet, featuring 12 young women and a central couple, has ever been performed in the Washington area before. That's not to say it doesn't have a rich history!

Stravinsky originally composed Le Baiser de la Fée (which translates to "The Fairy's Kiss") as a tribute to Tchaikovsky. Based on Hans Christian Andersen's short story "The Ice Maiden," the ballet adapts melodies and themes from some of Tchaikovsky's early piano pieces and songs. Because it's sieved through Stravinsky's distinctive musical sensibilities, I'm not sure how easy it is for audiences to recognize the Tchaikovsky inspirations, though!

Bronislava Nijinska originally choreographed the ballet for a 1928 Paris premiere, commissioned by Russian ballerina and actress Ida Rubinstein. In 1937, Balanchine created a new full-evening version for his American Ballet. In 1950, he revised it for New York City Ballet, calling it "The Fairy's Kiss" before eventually changing it back to the French title.

Meanwhile, in 1934, Stravinsky arranged a concert suite of music from the ballet, called Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée. Nearly 40 years later, Balanchine staged Divertimento for his 1972 Stravinsky Festival. With an original cast including Patricia McBride and Helgi Tomasson, this entirely new work incorporated excerpts from both Stravinsky's ballet score and the concert suite. Additionally, Balanchine eliminated the fairy-tale plot in favor of pure dance, allowing everyone who comes to the theater to create their own story.

The ensemble begins Divertimento in a joyful swirl of colorful costumes, which the lead ballerina joins before entering into a short waltz—and then a grand pas de deux—with her male consort. Wonderful solos and variations follow for each principal. The ballerina's solo is especially Stravinskian, with lots of twists and accents, while the male's variation has an imaginative, foreboding quality to it.

In 1974, Balanchine decided to add a second pas de deux to the end of Divertimento, performed to Tchaikovsky's "None But the Lonely Heart." Most audiences will recognize this exquisite music, as it has also been featured in films. (Balanchine took a similar approach with the Emeralds section of Jewels—after a couple of seasons, he added a sort of "apotheosis" to the ballet using new music.)

This extra pas de deux in Divertimento effectively summarizes everything that's come before it, ending with a beautiful image of just the central couple. Whatever Balanchine's reason for the addition, I think it's fascinating that he could call on just the right music to complete his vision.

I never danced Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée, though while I was in Balanchine's company, I started to learn it once, just for fun. I'm now excited to present The Suzanne Farrell Ballet's company premiere of this work during our 10th anniversary performances at the Kennedy Center.

Concerto Barocco

Concerto Barocco is a ballet I know from many different angles, because I've performed both of its solo roles at different times in my life. Originally created in 1941, the ballet was ornately costumed initially. In 1962, as a first-year corps member, I was thrown into the role of the second solo girl. I had never seen the ballet and now it was being revived with white leotards and skirts as costumes. Diana Adams was having knee trouble so she could not dance. Mr. Balanchine had me stand next to her and Pat Neary to determine whose height went best with Allegra Kent, who was replacing Diana in the first soloist's role. At the time, I wasn't sure whether being the shortest of the three (but still tall in my own right) was advantageous or not!

The second movement evokes a mood of peace and purity, while the two outer movements are fast and wonderfully energetic. The music is Bach's Double Violin Concerto, and one fascinating element to Balanchine's choreography is that each solo girl, at times, represents one of the two solo violins, while the eight corps girls are the remaining strings. Once while rehearsing the ballet, I glanced down in the pit and saw the two solo violinists playing very close together, almost as though one bow might collide with the other if the musicians didn't remain completely in sync with one another. Balanchine's choreography has that same sense of precision/precariousness and action/reaction tension to it.

A year later, in 1963, I made my debut as the first soloist—the adagio girl—in Concerto Barocco, this time partnered by Jacques d'Amboise. Learning the other role was an adventure, as I had to keep my body from instinctively moving to the counts I knew from the second soloist role. But in the end it was heaven to learn both parts, and that made it easier for me to stage the ballet later in life. I've taught it several times to other companies, including Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theatre of Harlem.

I've added Concerto Barocco to my company's repertoire for our 10th anniversary celebration. Audiences needn't do any homework to prepare for the ballet, but if you're intrigued, I'd encourage you to listen to Bach's Double Violin Concerto before seeing it. This is a great way to rouse an appetite for your experience in the theater, and to make it as meaningful as possible once the performance arrives.

Whenever Balanchine told me he was going to create a new ballet to a particular composer's work, I'd go and get the record and just listen to it—not dance to it—and soak in the anticipation of moving to that music, imagining all that was in store for me. With every Balanchine ballet, there's so much to hear, and so much to see, it's impossible to take it all in with a single viewing.